1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a nozzle row driving data conversion apparatus and a liquid droplet ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
Heretofore, an ink jet printer that forms an image by ejecting liquid droplets (ink droplets) onto the surface of a printing medium has been well known as a liquid droplet ejecting apparatus. This ink jet printer is configured to, in order to form an image on the surface of a printing medium such as paper or cloth, alternately repeat two kinds of operations: one being a transport operation that allows the printing medium to move in a transport direction; the other one being a dot formation operation that allows ink droplets to be ejected through a plurality of nozzles that are formed in a printing head while causing the printing head to perform scanning movement in a scan direction, and thereby intermittently repeatedly form and arrange a plurality of rows of dots (dot rows), which are formed and arranged in the scan direction through one of the repeated dot formation operations, along the transport direction.
With respect to such an ink jet printer, there is a tendency in that, in order to realize high-speed formation of a further high-resolution image, a plurality of printing heads, each including further minute nozzles that are arrayed at a high density on a bottom face thereof, are mounted in the ink jet printer. For example, in JP-A-2011-207115, there is described an example of an ink jet printer, in which four printing heads each including one hundred and eighty nozzles that are arrayed on a bottom face thereof are mounted. This ink jet printer includes, for each of a plurality of printing heads, a head control portion that selectively causes each of driving elements to drive a corresponding one of a plurality of nozzles.
In such an ink jet printer described in JP-A-2011-207115, however, there has been a problem in that, since control circuits for the printing heads (i.e., circuits that drive the printing heads and that are constituted by a unit control circuit and the head control portions) are configured so as to be in accordance with a total number of the printing heads, any further printing head whose existence causes a total number of printing heads including the further printing head to exceed a total number of a series of control circuits each of which is associated with, and controls, a corresponding one of the printing heads cannot be used. In other words, there has been a problem in that, when further printing heads are desired to be mounted, not only the modification related to the head control portions whose total number is increased, but also the modification of the unit control circuit is required.